Bet On It: `God Wants You To Roll' Works

March 10, 2005|By Steven Cole Smith, Sentinel Columnist

Fans of automotive journalism have likely read the work of John Phillips III, either in Automobile, where he pretty much started, or in Car and Driver, where he used to be a senior editor, was promoted to executive editor, and is now an editor-at-large.

I started at Car and Driver as a senior editor, and when Phillips stepped down from the executive editor's job, I stepped in, and soon realized why Phillips was willing to take a self-imposed demotion: Too much baby-sitting, not enough writing. I eventually stepped down, too.

Since Phillips is a friend, I would probably tell you his new book, God Wants You To Roll, was good, even if it wasn't. Fortunately, it is. It is also a very big surprise, as many of us didn't know Phillips could write like this. I suspect he didn't know for sure either. Phillips is best known for his edge, sharp as a Ginsu.

From his road test on the Subaru Baja: "Subaru hopes to sell 20,000 Bajas annually, and its marketing team is crystal clear and downright emphatic about not having a clue who will buy them. We applaud this candor and celebrate the arrival of any four-cylinder pickup that's fun to drive and weighs way south of two tons. It does strike us, however, that cuteness -- a property the Baja flaunts like Larry King wears shoulder pads -- is a trait that robust American males do not expect to find in their trucks. A cute truck is like a jockstrap with floral embroidery. A cute truck is like a riding mower with a spice rack. Like cuddling after sex. Possibly you get the idea."

Possibly, yes. Anyway, Phillips' book is of the straight-reporting, true-crime genre, the sort of tale that cries out to be a Lifetime movie of the week. Or would, if there were a better role for Melissa Gilbert.

God Wants You To Roll (Carroll & Graf, $15.95) begins in 1994, and concerns two teenagers from California, Robert "Buddha" Gomez and his pal, James Nichols. Buddha -- plump, pleasant, a born salesman -- was the adopted son of a millionaire, a top executive at Mission Foods, which is, the Texas-based company claims, "the world leader in authentic Mexican tortillas."

Buddha's rich father died and left his adopted son a $411 million fortune. A huge part of that fortune was dozens, perhaps hundreds, maybe thousands, of automobiles. Some luxury cars, some SUVs, some plain old nice Honda Accord-type sedans.

Buddha said that per his father's wishes, those cars should go to honest, hard-working, church-going folks. At a huge discount -- a $10,000 car might go for $1,000, for instance -- Buddha and his friend James began offering those cars to the congregation of the church James' family attended. After all, they'd say, God wants them to roll.

But there were far too many cars to be absorbed by one small congregation, so word of the offer spread. Across the country. Buddha's "miracle cars" were being sold to churchgoers everywhere.

There was one problem. Several, actually. Buddha had no rich father, and there were no cars. By the time everyone figured this out, Buddha and James had taken in $21 million. At least $8.7 million is gone for good, much of it apparently spent on Buddha's quest to become a skilled professional gambler in California casinos, such as one owned by Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt -- a place where Buddha once cashed a check for $518,731.

A Car and Driver reader forwarded Phillips a newspaper clip about the scam, and he pursued it, first as a column in the magazine that ran in the December 2002 issue, then as a full-fledged feature in October, 2003. But that still didn't tell the whole story, and Phillips took a leave from the magazine to track it all down for a book.

The miracle-cars scam went on for years, until it was finally brought down by a minor district attorney in Missouri. Buddha and James went to jail, as did two others, who may have been caught up in the scheme honestly at first, but then apparently could not resist the money they were making.

God Wants You To Roll is a remarkably detailed book, well-written and complete. None of us knew Phillips had that sort of attention span. I don't. I wish I did.

The book answers the question as to how so many people could be so stupid, so gullible, but Phillips offers a succinct explanation: "The con worked so perfectly and so long -- more than five years -- for this reason alone: You could get your money back.

"Over and over I talked to educated people who said, `I'd talk to my friends about it, and whenever they got cold feet, they'd make one phone call and get their money back, no questions asked. So I'd say to myself, `I'll just wait another month or so, see what happens. Why bail now if I can get my money back any time? What if I bail today and the cars are delivered tomorrow?' Of course, the people who waited too long lost all their money, because the boys pocketed the last $8.7 million that rolled in."

It was essentially a pyramid scheme, then, and the people who were last in lost it all.